Not for nothing…

I keep meaning to update my blog with things that I think are interesting or recommendations of Films, music and TV but laziness always gets the better of me. Tonight I’m going to try again with recommendations of two programs that I discovered this year that I would highly recommend to anyone.

Here we go:

The Newsroom

Written by Aaron Sorkin, the genius behind The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Social Network. The series takes place in a fictional American Network’s news centre. I love the way they work real life news stories into the world of these characters.

It’s witty, poignant and sometimes a bit cheesy. It also features the classic Sorkin style of every character being able to talk at 1000 words per minute and rarely being lost for words. But that’s something I love about it.

It garnered a lot of criticism from the media when it was released but mainly due to the fact that it was them being scrutinised for a change and being shown what an idealistic version of the news would look like.

Anyway, if you like original, funny and intelligent drama look no further. Hopefully this will get picked up on terrestrial TV at some stage so everyone can enjoy.

Secondly:

Community

Trust me, this show is nothing like the first four episodes of the first season, they are dire, drab and highly forced, but all of a sudden, everything clicks and this show shows it’s funny side.

Based in a community college and featuring what look like a clichéd bunch of misfits but are actually very intelligently written and often hilarious characters.

Over it’s 3 (and counting) seasons the writers have become more confident in their style and the show has blossomed into one of my favourite comedies of all time.

If you like arrested development, give it a try. It has also suffered a similar treatment at the hands of NBC as they drop it, cut seasons short and move it around schedules as they see fit.

It took me months of convincing Lucy to watch it with me and once we got passed the awkward beginning I can safely say she loves it too and we managed to watch about 30 episodes in one day! (Don’t judge, we were having a duvet day!)

One of the standout things for me are the multiple references to pop culture such as the Goodfellas style episode and the now legendary paintball episodes directed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin.